


Ash and Blood

by bittergrin



Category: Original Work
Genre: Cthulhu Mythos, F/M, Horror, M/M, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:21:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25927315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bittergrin/pseuds/bittergrin
Summary: “I. Would. Die. For. Him.”“Would you really?”“Yes.”





	Ash and Blood

The door burst inwards, the door jam exploding into a hail (well a light drizzle) of splinters, the deadbolt ripped through the wood. Of course, it was her fifth try to kick in the door, so she'd lost the element of surprise a while ago. She brought a pistol up, an old .38 so shiny it looked like a toy and shot twice. I took one in the heart and the other in the head, good shot. The teenage idiot she was here for was hiding in the kitchen, well clear of the line of fire. Her bullets weren't silver though, so this was more an inconvenience than anything else, a painful inconvenience.

"Ow!" I said when the neurons the second bullet had ripped grew back into place. My failure to die had shocked her for the moment, I glanced down at myself, blood all over my chest. "Fuck, I liked this vest.” I looked up.

She pulled the trigger again, another bullet ripped into me, followed by its three brothers. When my senses returned, because she’d shot me in the head again, it was to a hollow clicking. She was still standing there, pulling the trigger of the empty revolver.

“Thank fuck, you’re out.” I stepped forward and took the gun from her. her finger still twitched, pulling the missing trigger. “Do you have any idea how much that hurts?”

“Buh.” 

“I’ll take that as a, ‘no’.” I tossed the empty revolver into the kitchen. “Hey, shit-for-brains, you have any neighbors both near enough to hear that and interested enough to care?” I called into the kitchen after it.

“No!”

“Good.” I turned my attention back to the girl, her trigger finger starting to slow its spasms. I pointed at the couch “Sit down.” 

She was on her ass before she thought to protest. “Wha...?”

“So why, exactly, are you trying to kill shithead in there?” I thumbed in the direction of the kitchen.

“I shot you.”

Great, one of these, I thought. “Yeah”

“I shot you. I shot you in the heart.”

“Yup.” I wished she’d hurry up and get to the question.

“I shot you in the fucking head.”

“My fucking head is a bit lower than you were aiming, you just shot my regular one.” I wiped some blood out of the hair at the back of my head. “Great aim, by the way.”

She took a deep breath that sounded more like a sob. “I shot you, why aren’t you dead?”

“Werewolf.”

“Werewolf?”

“Uh-huh.”

She slapped me, hard.

“What was that for.”

She pulled a hunting knife from her boot, still not silver. “Why are you lying to me?”

“What makes you think I’m lying?”

“Is it safe for me to come in?” Called the moron from the kitchen.

The girl’s eyes didn’t even flicker in the direction of the sound

“No, now she has a large knife.”

“How large?” He asked.

“Did you ever see Crocodile Dundee?”

“What?”

I shook my head and returned my attention to the armed girl. “Fucking kids.”

“Why aren’t you dead?”

“Were-wolf. Now, why are you trying to kill scarecrow?”

“Scarecrow?” She asked.

“The Wizard of Oz. Scarecrow had no brains... I’m trying to come up with different insults for him as I go here...”

Her face was still blank.

“Really? Not even Oz? Mother-fucking kids.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “So why are you out here trying to kill dear little Justin in there?”

“There’s no such thing as werewolves.” She adjusted her grip on the knife.

“Fine, whatever, now about why you... gurgle”. I didn’t say gurgle, it was just more the sound I made after she slit my throat open. Which also hurts like a bitch I might add.

I looked her in the eyes until the new wound had also healed, blood first pouring, then trickling down my front. “Did you just come out here to ruin my clothes, is that what this is about? Are you with the fashion police?”

She opened her eyes wide enough that I thought they might pop-out. “Why aren’t you dead?”

“Oh fuck, really?” I facepalmed. “We’re back to that?” I rolled my head back and cursed at the ceiling until I felt better. “Okay, one time, pay attention, think you can do that?”

She nodded.

“I, me, the person sitting right the fuck here, am a werewolf. That means your little gun and little knife can’t kill me. Before you say werewolves aren’t real, I invite you to think of any other reason why I’m still alive that you would accept that doesn’t sound exactly as ridiculous as me being a werewolf. Alien? Vampire? Terminator? Mutant superhero? They’re all just as dumb, so you might as well just go along with the werewolf thing.”

I sighed, annoyed at letting myself get distracted. “Now, Guerrilla Warfare Barbie, why are you trying to kill... señor dunce in there?” I thumbed toward the kitchen again.

“She’s my girlfriend.” Came the voice from the kitchen.

“There’s no way this girl is dating you,” I said.

“Hey!” The idiot’s head appeared in the door.

“Really? You show your face in a room where at least one person might want you dead?” I fell backward on the couch. “You know what, I give up. He’s all yours.”

“There’s no such thing as werewolves.” She said, her mouth moving for the first time.

“You’re still stuck on that? I take it back, maybe you are stupid enough to date McMoron.”

“Hey!” The pea-brained ninny stepped into the room.

“What? Did I use that one already?”

“I thought he was in trouble, I thought you were going to kill him, so I came to help him.” She said.

“Finally, an answer that doesn’t involve me suffering great pain,” I said. “And you were somewhere between half and three-quarters right. He is in trouble, but I’m not going to kill him.” I glanced at him. “Maiming isn’t off the table though.”

She attempted to stifle a snicker.

“Wow, you must be dating him then,” I said and turned my attention to the slug-brained individual in question. “Don’t be rude, Justin, introduce me to the charming and inexplicably competent girl who’s just brain-damaged enough to date you.”

“Are you ever going to not insult me?” He said.

“I suppose I might accidentally forget, you turd-headed weasel.”

He sighed. “Kelly, Zach.” His hand gestured back and forth between us.

“You call that an introduction?”

“Bite me.”

“And risk making a fool like you immortal? No thanks.”

“I thought it was vampires that were immortal?” She asked.

I snorted. “Please, there’s no such things as vampires.”

“Said the werewolf,” said birdbrain.

“Whoa, a clever retort from the mucus-headed one. Don’t you think a werewolf would know though? Trust me, no vampires, closest you’ll find is ghouls but they don’t stop at just your blood and no one is going to be writing stories with them as the romantic lead.”

“Ghouls?” She asked.

“Trust me, you really don’t want to know any more,” I said. “Of course given that your brain-damaged moron is prone to reading forbidden tomes of ancient lore, out loud, you’re probably going to know more anyway.” I stood up and move towards the kitchen. “Still, no reason to ruin your appetite now.”

“That’s it? I barge in, try to kill you, and now you’re fine with me?”

I pulled off my ruined shirt, tossed it towards the laundry room, not that all the detergent in the world would fix the gunshots, and turned back to face her. “If I took it personally every time someone tried to kill me... well... I don’t have time for that.”

“I thought you just said you were immortal.”

“More or less.”

“How have you pissed off that many people?” The nincompoop asked.

“If you hadn’t noticed, fart-brain, I’m kind of an asshole.”

“I had actually noticed.”

“Shocking,” I said as I opened the refrigerator to look for something to eat. Regenerating always makes me hungry.

“So why is he in trouble?” The girl asked.

“If I had to guess I’d say because his parents are brother and sister.”

“They’re not.” The dunderhead said.

“First cousins?”

“No.”

“Huh.” I pulled out a carton of milk, I paused to look at it, I didn’t know milk still came in cartons, thought it was all plastic jugs now. I shrugged and downed the contents.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Kelly said.

“Ah...” I sighed, I love milk, and wiped my mouth on the back of my arm. “I did, just not meaningfully.”

She ground her teeth. “If you don’t want to get shot again, you’ll tell me why Justin is in trouble.”

“Feisty, I could like you.”

She moved over to dungbrain and took his hand. “I’m taken.”

I snorted. “Not how I meant it. Trust me, you have nothing I want.”

She knelt and drew a second gun from her other boot, fuck dammit. “Why. Is. Justin. In. Trouble?”

“Because he knows just enough German to read aloud from a book that no one should ever read aloud from.”

She thumbed the hammer of the small gun back, looked like a one-shot, but I’m not an expert on guns.

I rolled my eyes. “Fine, we don’t really have time for this though.”

“I do.” Her finger moved toward the trigger.

I rolled my eyes to the heavens. Teenagers.

“Show her the book Goofus.” I turned back to rummage in the fridge some more.

“You said not to show it to anyone.”

“And now I’m telling you to show it to your girl.” I pulled out a block of blue cheese that I don’t think started out that way.

Dippy unzipped his backpack and pulled out a battered book bound in brown leather, a hand-copied version of a much older book, and handed it to her. Unaussprechliche Kulte.

“What is this?” She asked, glancing from me, the book in her hand, and then back at me, the gun stayed level the whole time.

“Open it.”

She thumbed it open and glanced down again. “I can’t read this”

“Good, if I thought you could I wouldn’t let you near it. What’s the first word?”

“Unasprechlik?”

“Unaussprechliche. Ineffable. Unutterable. Unspeakable.” I pulled a loaf of bread out of the fridge and shut it. I glanced at her boyfriend, “See dingbat, right there, the first word. Un-speak-able. And what did you do? Spoke it.”

He moved his lips without making a sound, mocking me.

I rolled my eyes.

“Featherbrain finds the book, turns to the bookmarked page, and reads it. But because he isn’t very good with German, he sounds the words out as he’s saying them.”

“Why would that matter?”

“Words have power, especially certain words. Words which whoever left the book for him to find wanted him to say. Words that attracted the attention of a lloigor that is a really, really interested in him now.”

“A what?”

“Lloigor, just think of it as an evil spirit. It’s not, at all, but that should get you the gist.”

She glanced at the gun and back at me. “You expect me to believe that load of shit?”

I closed the refrigerator. This was not going well.

I rushed her.

She pulled the trigger and a bullet went into my right lung.

I forced the gun out of her hand.

I coughed up the bullet into her face.

“You asked. You don’t want to believe in werewolves and magic and shit? Fine. But you’re out of your league here. You may be better trained in combat than I am, somehow, you must have fucked up parents, but I just disarmed you. I’ve soaked up more bullets than you’ve fired. So either sit down and shut up or find where they keep the salt.”

“Salt?” She said it first but his voice echoed it.

“Yes, salt. Shitstain,” I pointed at him, “sit down. You,” I pointed at Battle Barbie, “find all the salt you can and pour it in a circle around him.” I walked over and took the book from her. “I’m going to try and find some way to put this thing down.”

Of course, I don’t know German, but at least there’s Google Translate.

So, there are three ways you can work magic. First, you can learn all the little secrets of the universe, the loopholes in the laws of physics. Then you can start trying to abuse them, unfortunately, this involves thinking in ways the human and near-human mind isn’t meant to and practitioners of this path, called Arcana by those with too much time on their hands, frequently go mad. Second, you can ask for help. There are not-even-close-to-human things out there who know the arcana backward and forwards. Call them demons, call them gods, call them spirits, angels, ancient aliens, tentacled horrors from a parallel dimension, or the things that squirmed in the darkness before someone said, “Let there be light”. Doesn’t really matter. The point is they’re out there, and probably in here, and they’re listening. Not all of them, not all the time, but if you learn the right words, the right rituals, the right offerings, you can bargain with them. Sometimes the bargains are pre-established, like an entity that accepts an offering of blood, any blood, and gives fire as hot as hell in return (I’ve gotten pretty creative with that one). Sometimes you have to negotiate. I advise against that. Third, you can find something made by one of the first two types. A talisman already prepared by an Arcanist or Theurge. It’s definitely the easiest route, you don’t have to know anything and you don’t have to sell your soul, or whatever, to anything. True, your power is limited to what trinkets you can find, but if you know a little arcana, you can usually fudge with it a bit without risking your sanity, much.

“You don’t even speak German, do you?” Asked the asslicker while I tried to type an umlaut on my android.

“Not a word, which is why there isn’t a lloigor trying to possess me. Why couldn’t you have taken Spanish?”

“At least I didn’t take something useless like Russian.”

I snorted. “You’d be surprised how useful Russian is for a werewolf.”

“I bet.”

“Don't try to be smart, you'll hurt yourself.”

The girl looked up from salting the earth and looked between the mung-brain and me. “How long have you two known each other.”

“We just met.” Butthead said at the same time I said, “Too long.”

She squinted her eyes and looked from my face to the fungus. “Shit. You're brothers.”

“No comment.” I said at the same time he said, “Barely.”

“How can you barely be brothers?”

“I was 16 when the amazing-dung-boy was born and our loving father threw me out on my ass before he started kindergarten.”

“Why?”

“Less talk, more circle of salt.” I turned my attention back to the hand-copied volume in my hand. I squinted between the book and my phone. Looked like the next word was “Formless.” Well, that couldn't be good.

A blurble came from the kitchen sink.

I sighed. Of course.

I turned and looked down. Something was pushing up past the disposal. I turned it on.

Something squealed like a set of bagpipes in a blender.

The girl jumped up. “What the hell was that?”

I glanced at the book. “A formless spawn, I think.”

“Spawn of what?” My brother asked.

“Uh uh, unlike you, I know not to say the thing's name.” I pointed at Kelly. “Circle looks good, go stuff up all the drains you can find. If something grabs at you, scream.”

She rolled her eyes but moved to comply. I returned to my translation.

“Oh sure, you're nice to her.”

“And Dad’s nice to you, so shut it.”

He grunted something that sounded like, “Not that nice.”

I ignored him.

I reached down, inside, and found the Wolf waiting. It’s hard to bring up during the day, even harder closer to the new moon, but it was late afternoon, and the full moon was less than a week away. The real tricky part is not going the whole way. I felt the pressure building in my face, heard a rushing sound in my sinuses.

“Oh, gross.” 

“Shut up...” I tried to say dipshit, but my mouth changed too much to allow speech first.

I ran over the checklist for what I wanted. Muzzle? Check. Olfactory Senses? Check. Olfactory Bulb so I could process a wolf’s sense of smell? Check.

I bent over the sink and inhaled deeply, then gagged.

Sewage. The distant scent of onion. The visceral smell of the thing’s blood, too intense for me to identify without fully changing, and a smell I’d never experienced before. It was like a man who hadn’t showered in 3 years had been eating a fish that had been sitting in the sun for three days: sweat, shit, piss, and rot.

I lost focus and my muzzle almost snapped back. The sudden pressure change in my sinuses made my ears pop.

I pulled up my notepad app and opened a file of research notes.

“Let’s see here, the post-human thing in the pipes was a servant of... the Sleeper of N’kai.” I paused to cross-reference the forbidden name in the german book with the forbidden name in my notes. “I think. Looks like its name has been hit with a bit of phonetic drift.”

“That’s fascinating and all, but how do you stop it from eating me?”

“With an attitude like that? I should let froggy have you.”

“Haha. I’m dying of laughter.”

“Do you want to be? I passed that curse a few pages ago.” I scanned another two pages looking for something useful and wishing I’d taken German instead of Spanish in high school. Not that I’d have remembered that any better.

“You’re kidding.”

“Possibly, you warthog faced buffoon.”

I turned the page to see something that looked vaguely like a recipe. I consulted my translated copy and found nothing similar. I looked around for something to write with, found a pen and pad near the phone, and set to translating.

Several minutes passed in sweet silence until the dweeb’s girlfriend returned, carrying a hand. I checked and both of hers seemed to be attached.

“This took a swipe at me through the master toilet.” She tossed it on the counter.

I picked it up and looked it over, it was boneless, kind of like a squishy glove, if gloves had nails caked in sewage. “Huh.” I tossed it back towards her. She let it fall on the tile floor. “Find another one and you can have a set.”

“Ew.”

I shrugged and went back to my study, wishing I’d invested in a tablet. I was forced to keep switching between Google Translate and a heavily expunged English copy of the book.

“Ah-ha. Fucking finally.” I said.

“What?” The airhead asked.

“I found what was done to you.” I said with a flourish and my most charming grin, which was more of an ugly leer. Then went back to reading, counting down in my head.

I’d just passed one when he spoke again. “Well?”

“Oh, you want to know?”

He looked at Kelly. “Shoot him again.”

She shook her head. “I already wasted most of my bullets on him, and it looks like the drain things are better targets.”

“Stab him a little?”

“Do it yourself.”

“He can’t leave the circle.” I pointed out while flipping pages.

“Do you want me to stab you?” She looked from him to me.

I didn’t even look up from the book. “I don’t particularly enjoy it, no. Hurts like fuck-all-else every time. But I’ll be lucky if I get out of this with just another stabbing.” I turned the page.

“So what did he do to me?”

I quirked an eyebrow, I had to practice that for months. “He? You know who did this?” 

“What? No. Of course not.”

“Uh-huh.”

“What did he, she, it, or they do to me?”

“You’re the offering in a fairly standard Sorcerer’s Contract.”

“Sorcerer’s Contract?” Kelly asked.

“Yeah, you know. Sell your soul to the devil to become a witch, and in,” I flipped back two pages, “thirteen years he comes and drags you to hell. Or, in this case, offer up someone else to take your place immediately and you’re safe until you otherwise die.”

“So they’re trying to drag my soul to hell?”

“I was being figurative. They plan to debone you and turn you into one of them, another of the Sleeper’s minions.” I checked some notes on my phone. “Huh, except for the time span this is almost identical to the Shepherd’s M.O.”

“The Shepherd, the Sleeper. What are you talking about.” Kelly asked, looking like she was reconsidering her previous ‘no stabbing’ stance.

“Epithets. There are… things, creatures, gods, whatever, that are attracted to the sound of their name. So, if you’re smart, you don’t use it. This whole situation is because he,” I pointed at my brother, “wasn’t smart.”

“Now, the really interesting bit,” I continued before either could butt in, “is that the payment of this contract can only be deferred to someone with whom the aspiring sorcerer ‘shares water’.”

“Water?” Kelly asked.

“Blood or other bodily fluids. So, family, I could have done it, or Dad. Except Dad isn’t that smart, and if he was he’d have used me instead. And while I am that smart, I would have used Dad. So it can’t be either of us. Mom is dead. No cousins related enough to count nearby. So it has to be someone he’s swapped bodily fluids with. So it could be you, and you could just be pretending to care to keep an eye on the situation and make sure nothing keeps him from being eaten.”

She blinked and started to say something.

I held up my hand. “But dickbreath here asked what ‘he’ did. Which raises the question,” I turned to face the dungmaster, “just who have you been making out with? Or fucking for that matter?”

Suddenly the little slime’s hands had become the most fascinating things on earth. His face taking on an interesting shade of red that clashed with his acne horribly. I looked at Kelly and saw her face going red for a very different reason. Ah, a show.

“Justin?” She asked, her voice cold.

He mumbled something too low for her to hear. Not too low for me though.

“Who?” She asked.

“Ben,” I said.

“Ben? What the fuck, Justin?”

“Ben.” I had to resist the urge to cackle. “Oh, I’m so waiting until Dad gets home to rub this in.”

He looked up. “No! You can’t!” He looked terrified.

“Oh. I can. The look on his face when he finds out.”

“Please. He’ll kill me.”

“He won’t kill you, he’ll just throw you out on your ass like he did me.”

“Wait. You’re gay?” Kelly asked, looking at me now.

I sketched a half bow. “Queer as a three dollar bill.”

She turned back to the two-timer, “And you’re gay!”

“No! It was just one kiss. It was horrible! I swear!”

I snorted, earning glares from both.

“You’d better get talking. She looks mad.” I said.

“We were doing our trig homework, and… I don’t know. We were sitting close comparing answers and his hand brushed my thigh. And I was curious. I mean, you’re into that, so what if I was into it too?”

“So you made out with him?” She asked, her eyes falling.

“Last year. We weren’t going out yet. And it was the one time, I didn’t like, we haven’t even spoken since.”

“So now the jilted lover wants you dead.” I said. “Tale as old as time.”

“Not my lover. One make-out session, half, a quarter of one.”

I turned to face Kelly. “So now I have to save my two-timing younger brother from the gay boy whose heart he broke. I’m a bit conflicted about whose side I should be on.”

She took a deep breath before answering. “Just because he’s a two-timing bastard doesn’t mean he deserves to die.”

“Hey!”

“Fair point. And I assure you our parents were married by the time slug-brains here was born.”

“So how do we break the contract?” He asked.

“We kill Ben,” Kelly said, fingering her knife.

“Won’t work. The contract is made. We could try and get him to break it though, of course, that would mean he becomes a target instead.” I said.

“What will work then? We can’t just let Justin die.” Kelly said.

“Yes, because that’s clearly what I’m doing. The circle of salt, bloody mess down the garbage disposal, and frantic reading are just my way of hurrying his death along.”

I could almost feel Kelly’s glare.

“You don’t know what he means to me,” Kelly said.

“Spare me. You’re in high school. You probably think _Romeo and Juliet_ is romantic instead of a story about two idiots who couldn’t keep their pants on.”

“It is romantic. I would die for Justin.” Kelly said.

I snorted.

“I. Would. Die. For. Him.” Kelly said again, poking me with each word. Damn, she sounded serious.

“Would you really?” I asked.

“Yes.” She said.

“No,” Justin said standing from his chair.

“Sit down.” Kelly and I said in near-perfect unison, before I alone continued, “You would give your life, freely, under no coercion from myself or my brother, to save that incompetent imbecile from a fate that he brought on himself?”

“Yes.” She said, looking me in the eye. She meant it. She was a moron.

“Good enough for me.” I raised my left hand in front of her, palm towards me, pulled a knife from a drawer behind me, and rammed it through my palm and into her chest. I missed her heart, but any sufficiently bloody wound would do for this.

“ _Cth'nglui Fthaggua Ktynga n’gha-ghaa fia’l thagn! Iä Fthaggua!_ ” I near screamed through clenched teeth as Justin screamed.

A blood-red light ripped into the room like a lightning bolt, the smell of ozone following it. The light struck Kelly, crackling along her skin and pulsing over her veins it sank into her. Eyes that had closed in either pain or shock when I stabbed her flew open, malevolent red light shining from behind them.

Her mouth opened and a sound emerged from it, like a Tesla coil trying to mimic Kelly’s voice. “What do you want, dog.” Now you may remember that just a few paragraphs ago I mentioned how dumb it was to try and negotiate with lloigor, you may also have noticed that I’m terrible at following my own advice.

“Him.” I took my right hand off the handle of the knife that still anchored me to the rapidly heating body of Kelly to point at the failed abortion that was my brother. “Protected. The Sleeper of N’kai wants him. The sacrifice is willing.”

Kelly’s body spasmed, red light shining from every orifice and the smell of burning flesh reaching my nose. Her left eye flash boiled and exploded, scalding my face. The red lightning filling the otherwise empty socket could still see. Her body spasmed again and her left arm crumbled to the ground as ash.

“The offering is acceptable. Anoint him with ash mixed with the blood of his blood, and Tsathoggua will not see him, will not hear him, will not smell him, will not feel him, will not taste him, will not find him though he kneels in N’kai and screams his name.” Her other eye popped. “Iä Fthaggua!”

“Iä Fthaggua,” I replied, sealing the deal.

Kelly’s body flashed into ash from the inside out as her veins filled with fire. The red light sparked away, leaving strange burns on the walls and ceiling before it was gone.

“How… how could you?” Justin asked. I looked and saw him standing, but still within the circle of salt, good.

I ignored his question. I filled my right hand with Kelly’s ash and let the blood from my left, knife still driven through it, mix with her remains.

I approached him but he only stared, a look of horror and confusion on his face. I sprinkled the ashes over him with one hand, and my blood with the other. Then, in a paste made of both, I traced Cen, Thorn, Eoh, and Eolh upon his brow.

“You… killed Kelly.” He said.

I nodded, pulling the knife from my hand.

“You just… killed her.”

“She volunteered,” I said.

“But, she didn’t know, she didn’t mean it.” He said looking up at me but not quite meeting my gaze.

“No, she probably didn’t.” 

“How could you?”

“You or her.”

He met my eyes for an instant, then looked down, staring at the ashen heap.

I turned and walked towards the living room, careful to grab my phone from the counter as I went. “Maybe next time you’ll be more careful who you kiss.”

**Author's Note:**

> In the same universe as my High School Musical series (and a Newsies fic I'm working on).


End file.
